At first Nikki thought it was a tiger: its orange fur, streaked with black, were unmistakable. But no, she realized in numb horror, it isn’t a tiger. Its body, its head, even its posture were all subtly wrong. The fact that it looked close to a tiger made it even more a disturbing sight.
A tiger … Oh, holy mother of God …
Before the thought was fully formed, the creature in the cage began to change. Its forelimbs shortened, its hind legs stretched. Its spine, chest and pelvis shifted, the bones and muscles moving sickeningly under the tawny pelt. And even that changed, the short fur vanishing as though absorbed by the skin. In a handful of seconds, the beast was gone, to be replaced by …
By a man. A short, slender man squatted calmly on the floor of the cage. Naked, his skin with a yellowish tinge. His eyes almond-shaped, flashing bright green under their lids. A middle-aged Chinese man, balding, with an expression of unshakable calm on his face.
“Dr. Ling …” Nikki gasped.
“Yes,” the man said quietly. “Are you to be my next patient, hmm?”
Chapter Ten
Her mouth working silently, Nikki took a step back from the horrors that faced her.
“Dr. Ling” — the weretiger — watched her with what appeared to be benign interest. “Yes,” he mused, “such a pretty child, so young, so pure …” Then another expression—more speculative—spread over his face. “Yet there is more to you than that, child. You have power. Power you have not yet learned to use…”
She took a second step backward. Another. She bumped into something yielding behind her. She spun with a gasp.
It was Funakoshi. His eyes were flashing, almost insane, she thought. In her shocked state, she found herself waiting for him to change form into some beast —perhaps a wolf, or a dog. She backed away from him, bumped into a table. The cage on it rattled as the disembodied hand flung itself at the bars, trying to get to her.
“You?” Funakoshi snarled. “You should be dead.”
Well, that settles any doubts I had. Impossibly, some part of Nikki’s mind remained calm, almost dispassionate.
Funakoshi turned, yelled over his shoulder, “Security!”
Within a couple of seconds, two guards — breathless from running—appeared, flanking Funakoshi. At first Nikki thought they’d responded to the scientist’s summons. But no, she quickly saw, it’s something else. Both of the guards were terrified, not just tired, and one was wounded: blood dripped from a gash in his cheek onto his jumpsuit.
“Restrain her,” Funakoshi ordered haughtily, pointing at Nikki.
But the guards didn’t spare her more than the briefest glance. “Sumimasen, Funakoshi-san,” the lead guard said, with a bow. “I’m sorry, but your safety is our only concern at the moment.”
Funakoshi glared at him scornfully. “You will follow my order,” he snapped.
The guard bowed again. “I beg forgiveness, Funakoshi-san, but we are following our orders, issued directly by Eichiro-san himself. Your safety is more important than anything else.” (Even your lives. Nikki’s mind filled in the unspoken phrase.) The guard looked nervously over his shoulder. “The attackers will be here soon,” he told the scientist. “We must take you out of here to a place of safety. We can use the rear door.”
“Leave here?” From the outrage in Funakoshi’s voice, the guard might as well have suggested he eat his own child. “Neverl The work here” — his gesture included everything, from the staring rats-but-not-rats to the weretiger in his cage — “is of vital importance. It must be protected. I will not leave here.”
Both guards’ faces went totally expressionless, cold and hard as stone. “We will do our duty,” the older guard said ironically.
As he started to turn away, Nikki grabbed the guard’s arm. “What’s happening?” she asked. “What attackers?”
It was the younger guard who answered, seemingly relieved to talk to someone who wasn’t being stubborn. “We don’t know what they are, Carrson-san,” he blurted. “Monsters. Things with wings and no faces, bodies with the flesh rotting off them, things with faces all over them …”
“They came over the fence near the gate,” the senior guard said, addressing both Nikki and Funakoshi, “and through the gate itself. We destroyed many, but they just kept coming.” Nikki saw him suppress a shudder. “We’ve been cut off from the main force, Funakoshi-san — the four of use here, plus maybe three more outside. Their orders are to fight a withdrawing action, falling back to this building. We have no choice but to hold out here” — he shot a fierce look at Funakoshi — “until the remainder of the force relieves us.”
Nikki looked at the guards, noticing that neither of them wore radio headsets, although they both carried pistols. She also saw that the younger one had no shoes on, and his superior’s jumpsuit wasn’t properly zipped up. They looked like they’d just got out of bed — which was probably the truth. “Does the rest of the force know we’re here?” she asked.
The senior guard’s bleak look was answer enough. The guard turned to the scientist. “Sumimasen, Funakoshi-san,” he started. His voice was scrupulously polite, although Nikki could sense the effort that was costing him. “Sumimasen, so sorry, but you must reconsider. You are more valuable to Nagara than any specimens, any data. If you survive, you can replicate whatever was lost. If you die, the data is useless, because you are no longer around to analyze it, nehl”
Nikki had to admire the man’s diplomacy. His argument was solidly logical, but also gave Funakoshi’s ego a healthy stroke.
But it didn’t affect the scientist at all. “No,” Funakoshi snapped. “You will defend the contents of the labs, to the death if that’s what it takes.”
Both security guards bowed. “Hai, Funakoshi-san,” they chorused.
Submachine-gun fire rattled — close, just outside the building. A scream of torment that could never have come from a human throat made Nikki jump.
“Well, it seems as though my friends will soon be paying you a visit.” Everybody turned at the soft voice behind them.
The weretiger — “Dr. Ling” — was watching them with detached amusement. “Your torment at their hands won’t be as longlasting as mine at your hands, I should think,” the creature went on to Funakoshi. “But it will be more intense.”
Funakoshi strode to the cage. “Help me,” he ordered, “tell me how I can defeat the … the things outside.”
“Dr. Ling” just smiled.
“You helped me before,” Funakoshi barked. “Help me now.”
“I never helped you,” the creature contradicted sharply. “You took from me. You took my blood, you took my genes for your experiments. You asked me questions, and I answered them when I saw fit. But help you?” The weretiger laughed, a chilling sound.
The gunfire was closer, but still muffled by the building’s outer door. And then suddenly the noises were louder, sharper, more immediate. Nikki knew somebody — hopefully one of the security guards — had opened the door.
“Funakoshi-san,” the senior guard said urgently, “we must leave. I cannot allow you to be killed.”
“Then protect me,” the scientist shouted. “Discharge your duty. But we are not abandoning this lab.”
The two guards bowed again, quickly checked that their pistols were ready for action. Nikki saw the weretiger smile mildly, shaking his head in… In what? Disappointment? Amusement? What would amuse a weretiger? She shivered.
Her pistol was still in her hand. For an instant, the temptation was almost overwhelming to bring it up and empty the clip into the gently smiling creature in the cage. Why not? she asked herself. It killed John Black, didn’t it, and the soldier? Tortured them to death. Why shouldn’t I kill it? Her hand tightened on the grip, and she started to raise the pistol.
Then lowered it again. She knew she couldn’t shoot the caged creature — not in cold blood, and particularly when it looked like a harmless old man. (Of course, her mind knew that was just a guise, but her emotions reacted d
ifferently.) How would she feel, watching the flechette rounds shredding “Dr. Ling’s” flesh? How would she feel about herself afterward?
Not that the weretiger didn’t deserve death. And not that she’d hesitate to shoot it if it were free and attacking her or anyone else. But gunning it down as it was helpless—executing it, making herself into judge, jury and executioner … That she couldn’t do. A creature of Orrorsh might think it natural, but not her.
She felt “Dr. Ling’s” green eyes on her. His smile broadened slightly, as though he could read her decision —her weakness, she knew the creature would call it — in her face. She turned away.
Another rip of submachine-gun fire echoed through the lab, followed by a very human shriek of terminal agony. The door to the lab opened, and a third security guard — bloodstained, his jumpsuit torn, but his submachine-gun at the ready — staggered in. He spun and triggered a short burst of fire into the hallway. “They’re coming,” he gasped, “they’re right behind me.” Nikki had seen the man before, she knew, but it took a moment to place him. That’s right, the one on duty outside this building. Uramatsu, his name was. He looked quite different now. His short hair was matted with blood, and his pale face was streaked with it. His left eye was a gory mess. He must be in agony, Nikki thought. But he wasn’t letting that get in the way of his duty.
“What about the others?” the senior guard snapped.
Uramatsu shook his head. “Gone,” he said simply. He triggered another burst out the door at something Nikki couldn’t see. She heard the bullets thudding into something, heard a bellow of pain and rage. “Get out the back way,” he said. “I can hold the corridor for long enough.” The man’s simple heroism was enough to bring tears to Nikki’s eyes.
But the senior guard shook his head. “Unacceptable,” he stated flatly, favoring Funakoshi with a withering look. “We make a stand here.”
Uramatsu looked about to argue, but then his face became expressionless and he bowed. “Hai. We make our stand here.” He positioned himself in the doorway, steadying himself against the frame. The other two guards dropped into combat crouches, their guns trained out into the hallway.
“What do we face?” the senior guard asked. “I don’t see anything …”
Uramatsu started to answer.
And then all hell broke loose. The two crouching men opened fire with their pistols, while Uramatsu squeezed off short, controlled bursts from his weapon. Nikki backed away from the chaos in the doorway, deeper into the lab. She could hear “Dr. Ling” chuckling quietly.
The senior guard was the first to die. A red tentacle, dripping with slime, lashed into view, driving with hideous force into the man’s chest. Blood sprayed. The guard screamed, a terrible gurgling wail, and then was silent. Nikki turned away, her gorge rising in her throat.
I have to get out of here.
Funakoshi was backing away from the doorway, horror graven on his face. He bumped into a table, almost overturning a cage. The cage’s occupant squealed, a high-pitched giggle. He took another step back, toward the center of the room.
Nikki grabbed his arm. “Come on,” she urged, pointing to the door in the far wall, “we can get out of here.”
But Funakoshi shook her off. “he,” he shrieked, “No!” And then to the guards, “Kill them, kill them all!” He turned his fevered eyes back on Nikki. “Why do you want me to leave? So you can take credit for all I’ve accomplished? Is that it?”
She looked into his eyes in horror, knowing that Funakoshi was insane. Had he been unstable to begin with, or was it just the work he was doing — and the fact he was doing it in Orrorsh — that had driven him over the edge? She’d never know. She turned away, ran to the door in the rear of the lab. One last time she looked over her shoulder.
Uramatsu and the other remaining guard died together. A mass of black-furred, scurrying creatures flooded through the door. The rats-but- not-rats leaped on the men, their fangs and claws tearing at them. As they fed, the dozens of creatures screamed in exaltation.
She heard a choking gurgle, turned to the center of the room.
Funakoshi was dying, too. He’d backed further away from the door, until he’d bumped into the weretiger’s cage. Now he had his back to the bars, struggling to free himself from “Dr. Ling’s” fingers, which were sunk in the scientist’s throat. Funakoshi’s eyes were rolling wildly, his face already turning a dark, mottled purple. His heels drummed against the floor and against the cage, as the slightly-built Ling effortlessly lifted him clear of the ground. Ling was smiling, cooing to victim as he died, “So nice, so nice, yes …” Nikki turned, gagging, and burst through the door.
Another lab. She didn’t see anything but the door opposite her. She ran to it, wrenched it open. A hallway and another door, and then she was outside.
The compound flashed with intermittent lights — flashlight beams, the muzzle flashes of guns, occasional bursts of flame. Shapes moved in the darkness, most human but some most definitely not. Twisted shadows ran and gamboled in the moonlight. It looked like a scene right out of hell.
Nikki ducked around the corner of the building, flattened herself against the wall. She couldn’t see the chaos any more—the battle seemed to be concentrated around the gate and the helipad — but she could still hear it. The stu ttering of automatic weapons, the sharp crack of pistols were punctuated by screams of pain or rage. Again, some of the screams were human, but many weren’t.
Her heart was hammering in her chest and in her ears, her breathing fast and shallow. She was overwhelmed, totally and completely — too much had happened too quickly, too many shocks to her mind, too much horror for her to witness. “StopW” she wanted to scream. Escape — any kind of escape … that’s what she wanted. She needed to withdraw, hide, anything to get it over. Even death would be an escape …
No! She forced herself to breathe deeply, slowly, flushing the poisons of fear from her body. Her heajrt was still racing, but at least now it wasn’t the triphammer beat she could feel in her head. She had to get out of here — that was the escape she needed. The gate was out. So that left the river. She ducked back around the corner in a painful crouching run.
A figure loomed up out of the darkness ahead of her: a pale figure, small, unarmed. She stopped dead in her tracks. It was “Dr. Ling,” running toward the tumult at the main gate, hideously — inhumanly — fast. “Perhaps we’ll meet again, Miss,” he said softly, without breaking stride and without his voice betraying any exhaustion. “I should like that.” And then he was past and gone, vanished into the darkness. Belatedly, Nikki brought her pistol up, but the lancing beam of the laser found no target.
He’s loose. The thought filled her with cold horror. The weretiger’s loose. None of us are safe. Than another thought struck, and she grinned in wry amusement. And this is safe? she asked herself.
There was fighting on the river bank as well—small knots of security guards hunting down and eliminating intruders, or groups of intruders hunting guards. It looked to Nikki’s inexperienced eye that the Nagara forces had regained the upper hand, but there were still a frightening number of horrors loose in the compound.
Nikki was still in the shelter of a building — her building, she realized with irony — maybe ten yards from the water’s edge. She started across the open space …
“Carrson-san! Help me!” Nikki spun as the voice rang out behind her.
It was Dei, the guard who’d taught her how to use her pistol. He had his back against a building a dozen yards away. Unarmed, his right arm — or the tattered remnant that was all that was left of it—hung uselessly by his side. In front of him, ten feet away and approaching slowly, was a walking corpse, its rotting flesh hanging in shreds from its bones. It reached for Dei with clawed hands.
“Help me!” the man screamed again.
Nikki brought her gun up, steadied it in both hands, and touched the trigger. The laser aiming dot bloomed on the back of the zombie. She squeezed the trigger, fought
the recoil as the gun boomed. Brought it back on line, and shot again. Again. Again and again, until the gun clicked empty.
The flechettes flayed the flesh from the creature’s back, deflecting from bones with a thin buzzing whine. The destruction the shots caused was sickening.
But it didn’t stop the creature’s advance. Even as Nikki’s rounds were tearing it apart, it reached out toward Dei, plunged its chisel-like claws into his throat. Twisted and pulled. The guard’s final cry was cut off. His body collapsed in a bloody heap.
Slowly, the creature turned to face Nikki, began to advance. She thought she heard it chuckle.
Nikki screamed, turned and ran. When she hit the water she kept running as long as she could, then hurled herself forward in a surface dive. She took three strong strokes, with the current, letting the river carry
her away from the horrors behind her.
*
Nikki was exhausted. The aftereffects of terror had drained all the energy from her body. Her wet clothes, clinging to her body, were cold, steadily leeching away even more of her stamina. It was all she could do to keep walking, keep pushing her way through the jungle. It would be so tempting to just lie down, close her eyes if only for a moment. But no, she knew, there were still threats in the jungle. To sleep — here, undefended — would be to die.
The river had carried her more than a hundred yards downstream from the outpost before she’d been able to make it back to the bank. But that was all to the good, she figured. The outpost was still a battlezone. Who knew if the horrors were bringing in reinforcements?
She’d dragged herself from the water, resting for a moment on the bank before forcing herself to her feet and moving on. There was no safety for her anywhere in the jungle, not out here alone. She’d fired all the rounds in her pistol, and besides she’d dropped the weapon when she’d run into the river. She had no way of protecting herself—as if even the pistol would do it, she thought grimly. The only place she’d be safe was in Peter Hollingforth’s camp, with the remaining three soldiers to protect her. (And will 1 be safe even there? She crushed the unbidden thought.) On the way out, it had taken her more than twenty minutes to get from the camp clearing to the outpost. The way back would take her considerably longer, she knew. For one thing, the current had taken her some distance east of the stockade; for another, she’d decided to take a wide detour around the area of the outpost. It would take her almost an hour to reach safety, she figured — an hour in which all the horrors of Orrorsh could try to kill her, and she had no way of stopping them.
Nigel Findley Page 28